Supermen of Malegaon: 10 Years Since
Where are they now?
Supermen of Malegaon is a 2012 documentary by Faiza Ahmad Khan which follows Naseer Shaikh, an independent filmmaker in the small town of Malegaon, while they prepare for and shoot for Malegaon ka Superman (lit. Superman of Malegaon).
Malegaon has as many theaters as district HQ - Nashik, despite being at least thrice as small. Until a few years ago it also had a thriving film industry which produced rip-offs, spoofs, and everything in between. Filmmakers with little technical know-how and even less money would assemble a ragtag team of an almost always unpaid crew. These films would be littered with local references, dialects, and would reference problems of the common folk. For example, in Malegaon ka Superman, the bad guy loves pollution and filth. The cell reception in Malegaon is not too good, so Superman has to climb up a tree to make calls. You get the drift. All of this - with a healthy dash of slapstick.
SoM is an endearing film. The video-hall owner turned garment seller, Naseer Shaikh is the most successful filmmaker in Mollywood - his Sholay spoof Malegaon ke Sholay brought in 200,000 Rs against a budget of 50,000 Rs, running for several weeks in dingy video parlors. Naseer wants to take the next leap - and use a green-screen to make Superman fly. But how did he get started? His love of film comes from his childhood which was spent at the video parlor his father owned. But he is a pragmatist, he knows this is and can only be a hobby. He has no dreams of moving to Mumbai. He even advises his relative against getting too involved in the film line. In contrast, is the writer Farogh Jafri, who poetically laments the pain of creating characters and not being able to see them on screen, in a particularly touching scene (one of many) in the documentary, but still holds on to the dream of making it in Mumbai.
The film also reflects on some *heavy* topics - the communal tensions between Muslims and Hindus (the town still makes the news whenever there are updates in the highly-politicized 2008 blasts case), It also talks about the working life of men in Malegaon. About 40% of the adult population is directly employed in power looms. Now, power looms are an early 20th century invention - but small scale, decentralized production of grey-cloth (not enough space here to explain what that means) in centers like Malegaon is an important node in the value chain of garments that are ultimately meant for the export market. Most of these power looms are owned by or rented by individuals, with little access or willingness to take on debt. So competition from cheaper labor markets like Bangladesh has been putting pressure on these Indian entrepreneurs. Demonetisation hit this cash reliant sector particularly hard, with production almost halving. The Covid-19 lockdown also did not help. While labor was not scarce in Malegaon, as almost all the loom workers lived in Malegaon; but demand downstream was affected, as the principal buyers of gray-cloth in Gujarat and Rajasthan heavily relied on migrant labor. So the Malegaon looms were also hit, shutting down completely for days at times. We can only hope that the industry can power through the coal shortage affecting the already distressed GENCOMs and DISCOMs.
Naseer in an interview said that the rise of social media and ease of piracy with greater internet penetration has killed the local film industry. The local religious leaders would frown at all the naach gaana (frivolity), and that this also affected his decision to step away.
But just how true is the first claim. Now of course, Naseer is probably right - availability of short form video content has affected the film industry worldwide. Of course it would affect the local industry! But it is interesting to note that, in the nearby Khandesh region, short form video and internet has created superstars.
Go to YouTube and type in the word ‘Khandesh’ in the search bar and let autocomplete do its magic. Almost all the results would be related to comedy sketches. These are short to medium length videos (anywhere between 8 to 30 minutes), with the words ‘Khandesh’ and ‘Comedy’ in the title, and pop-bright thumbnails, and millions (and in one instance >1 billion) of views.
Now Khandesh comedy is a catchall term, and some of the popular names in this space actually live and work in Malegaon. Since the last few years the industry has pivoted to content driven by and made for the internet. It is informed by the latest trends on the internet and puts them in a local context. Over the years, certain actors - like Asif Albela or Chotu Dada have become famous - and they play the same characters across videos. The formula for the video title of a popular video would be : ‘Popular Khandeshi actor/character’ + ‘buzzword’.
Ex: ‘Chotu Pusha’, referencing the superhit Telugu action film, ‘Pushpa’; ‘Choti Gangubai’, referencing the then newly released Hindi film, ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’, etc. There are literally hundreds of these videos. And from what I can gather the videos have little or nothing to do with what it is referencing.
The new form videos seem to retain the vibe of the feature length films that gave rise to this genre. People are pulling faces, and doing slapstick. Someone is always running a scam and someone is always getting scammed. So what is the appeal? I don’t know. It is tempting to say their popularity has something to do with the characters speaking in a local dialect. There is a lot of out-migration from Khandesh and that part of Maharashtra, maybe people are looking for something to remind them of their home? I am not so sure that the audience for these videos is purely Khandeshi. They are way too popular to be this highly regional in its appeal.
But my instinct, backed by a very unscientific research methodology tells me that the audience is not the most tech-savy and is probably not comfortable with English. And I say this mostly because these video creators don’t have a significant presence on the social media platforms popular amongst the urban affluent - Instagram, Reddit, Twitter. And even on YouTube, the comment sections are strangely empty. Textbook case of passive viewers. (But even passive viewers are fodder for the adsense machine. And I am sure these creators are making a sweet buck for their efforts). Another clincher - none of my friends know who these superstars are.
There is also big corporate money in this genre (if you could call regional language content a genre). A lot of Khandeshi comedy videos are hosted on channels with familiar names : Ultra Cinema, Wings Music, Venus Music - all big music and film distributors. In fact Venus rebranded to ‘Ishtar’, after it was bought by the French media conglomerate ‘Believe’. I could not find a lot of information on this deal online (to be honest, I did not look to hard), but it seems that this rebranding signals a push and focus towards Hindi/regional content (‘Ishtar’ being how ‘Star’ is often pronounced in several Indian dialects).
We have digressed significantly from the original premise of this post.
What are the people involved with Supermen of Malegaon doing now?
Naseer Shaikh went on to direct the Mr. Bean inspired SAB TV silent comedy ‘Malegaon Ka Chintu’ for a couple of years. He has quit filmmaking and now runs a restaurant in Malegaon.
Shafique Shaikh who played the role of Malegaon’s Superman died of oral cancer shortly after the release of the documentary. Shafique is survived by his wife and their two kids.
Farogh Jaffri, the writer, passed away in September 2020 of multiple organ failure, presumably because of Covid-19 complications.
And what’s Malegaon doing? Not much has changed. Power cuts are still rampant, there isn’t another industry replacing the fewer and fewer textile jobs and the Hindu-Muslim divide still remains entrenched. The only thing that seems to have changed is that people are consuming content on their phones and the video parlors have shut down.
Sources:
https://www.indiaspend.com/notebandi-frontlines-out-of-cash-a-dying-textile-town-goes-silent-55759/
https://www.news18.com/news/india/malegaon-ka-superman-actor-dies-of-mouth-cancer-398961.html
https://mdd.maharashtra.gov.in/Site/Upload/Pdf/Malegaon_Report.pdf
https://www.facebook.com/SupermenOfMalegaon/photos/a.433520133327624/3505853519427588/?type=3
PS: There is another connection between the new age Khandeshi superstars and Supermen of Malegaon. One of the first roles, Chotu did was in the Naseer Sheikh’s TV Show - ‘Malegaon Ka Chintu’.
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